This is the place to find ideas for art projects, or just a place to talk about being a creative educator.

Friday, December 6, 2013

Cut yourself out

I love our state art conventions because I find so many great lessons. The next lesson I found was a self portrait project that involved photoshop and giant paper and oil pastels.

I love any project that takes kids out of their comfort zone, I know it kind of makes me a bully, but it is for the sake of their creativity. :) Anyways, I loved that this project was done on a large scale and it made them break down their faces into shapes. Not just one, but two comfort zones collapsed. If only I knew how to write an evil laugh.

So, first they had to have a picture of themselves. Thank goodness for their cell phones and all of the selfies that they take. Next they had to put that picture and put it into photoshop and alter it using the cutout filter. Once they adjusted the different levels and got the image the way they wanted they had to print it out. Then they could either free draw it or grid the image onto an 18x24 piece of tagboard. Once they drew the outlines of the broken down shapes they then could color in the shapes with either oil pastels or markers. As you will see none of the marker ones made my blog. I won't offer that choice again. They weren't horrible, but not my favorites.